Overwhelmed

I’ve been attending an online course.

In that online course participated in by 1,000+ students, the discussion boards can become overwhelming. In fact, to date, after just two weeks, over 40,000 posts have already been made. If I don’t visit the class for a few days, I will come back and see so much new things posted that I sometimes feel too overwhelmed. Too overwhelmed in fact that I sometimes just decide to close the site and not even engage. There’s too much noise and too much stimulation. My introverted brain was getting fried.

Then somebody in class, one of the facilitators, said something that helped me. “This is not a race. This is an experience. It doesn’t matter if there are people ahead of you or behind you. What’s important is that there are people with you. Find the ones who are in the same journey. You don’t need everyone, just a few good ones. You don’t need to read everything or absorb everything – just the few ones that resonate with you and your journey”.

It’s the perfect analogy for life. Yes, life is overwhelming. Life throws a lot at us. Responsibilities, opportunities, problems to look at, issues to solve, relationships, commitments, et al. Too many in fact – and the reality is that you can’t soak it all in.

And you shouldn’t.

So pick. Pick where you want to be. Pick what you want to do. Pick and stick with it. Forget the rest, they are just noise.

Often, the best decisions we make are the times when we said NO. Each time we say NO to things that do not matter, we say YES to things that do.